UK must nurture alliances in new era of global power politics, says policy adviser

In sweeping lecture on Britain’s ‘grand strategic moment’, John Bew warns ‘we cannot just manage risk, we are in a competition’

The UK faces a choice between using statecraft to plan and deepen its international alliances or simply managing relations with its rivals and risk sliding into war, Rishi Sunak’s foreign policy adviser has said.

In a sweeping lecture on Britain’s “grand strategic moment”, John Bew drew on how the national character had been shaped by history, claiming the fundamental assumptions about how British leaders have thought about the world had been shaken by events.